The Idiots Guide to High Frequency Trading

First, let me say what you read here is going to be wrong in several ways. HFT covers such a wide path of trading that different parties participate or are impacted in different ways. I wanted to put this out there as a starting point . Hopefully the comments will help further educate us all

1. Electronic trading is part of HFT, but not all electronic trading is high frequency trading.

Trading equities and other financial instruments has been around for a long time. it is Electronic Trading that has lead to far smaller spreads and lower actual trading costs from your broker. Very often HFT companies take credit for reducing spreads. They did not. Electronic trading did.

We all trade electronically now. It’s no big deal

2. Speed is not a problem

People like to look at the speed of trading as the problem. It is not. We have…